Monthly Archives: June 2007

Here’s an interesting article on BobMarley.com discussing the adaptation of the classic reggae anthem “One Love” as the tourism theme for Jamaica.

“One Love,” which adapts several lines from Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready,” was originally recorded in 1965 by Bob alongside fellow Wailers Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh and was produced by Coxsone Dodd for his legendary Studio One label featuring the jaunty tempo that typified the era’s ska music. However, much better known is the more melodic interpretation of “One Love” that was included on Bob’s 1977 album Exodus (cited as Time magazine’s Album of the Century). With its slower reggae beat and cheerily plunked piano chords, the Exodus rendition of “One Love” was selected by the Jamaican Tourist Board as its theme song in the early 90s and continues to be used by the organization to promote the island within the competitive travel industry.

“One Love” symbolizes the message of Jamaica to the world through tourism as we seek to promote peace and harmony and tolerance of all people,” explains David Shields, Deputy Director of the Jamaica Tourist Board. “The song has been used repeatedly by the tourist board to promote Jamaica and in recent research, our consumers have indicated that not only does the song resonate positively but as a destination Jamaica resonates positively through the song. So Bob Marley’s iconic presence and his music continues to represent Jamaica and our work in a positive way and in all of our campaigns we continue to use ‘One Love’ and reggae as one of our unique selling propositions to the world.”

On a somewhat-related note comes news from a Seattle Trademark Lawyer, reporting on a recent lawsuit filed in the United States by an American rock band called The Wailers. They’ve been performing as “The Wailers” since 1959, and they registered their band name as a trademark in 2003. Now they complain about the registration of the domain name wailers.com and allege that The Wailers in Jamaica have infringed and diluted their trademark for the band name and are causing confusion among music lovers everywhere.

The Wailers was a ska, rocksteady and reggae group formed in Kingston, Jamaica in 1963, consisting of Junior Braithwaite, Beverley Kelso, Bunny Livingston (aka Bunny Wailer), Bob Marley, Peter McIntosh (aka Peter Tosh), and Cherry Smith. They were called variously The Teenagers, The Wailing Rudeboys, The Wailing Wailers, and finally The Wailers.

What your hands do, it’s your own eyes that ‘ve seen. So, won’t you judge your actions, to make sure the results are clean? It’s your own conscience, that is gonna remind you, that it’s your heart, and nobody else’s, that is gonna judge. So, be not selfish, in your doings, pass it on. Help your brothers, in their needs, pass it on. Live for yourself, you will live in vain. Live for others, you will live again.

NO USE FOR A NAME are a four-piece punk rock band from San Jose, CA, and have been the torchbearers of the skate-punk scene since Tony Sly and Rory Koff started the band in 1987. Anyway, they’ve got a greatest hits album coming out on the Fat Wreck Chords label in a couple of weeks, appropriately titled “All the Best Songs” which they will be promoting, no doubt, in an upcoming concert in their hometown at a club called — drumroll please — The Blank Club. “Keep Them Confused” is the name of the latest record by the band.

Other bands, that might have a use for a name, should check out Wordlab’s great legacy list of names for rock bands and albums, or tap into the fleshy membranes that lurk here on Worldab thinking up wild and wonderful band name maker.

Wordlab got some good press the other day, in the Lifestyle section of the Hartford Courant. Here’s an excerpt that talks about the excellent ideas for names of bars and clubs generated by some of the creative minds that lurk in the Wordlab Forums.

Some club owners look for name advice online. The website www.wordlab.com offers a forum for entrepreneurs seeking monikers for everything from hot-dog carts to big-city nightclubs.

“I am opening a new club in Ohio, and I can’t come up with a catchy name. … It will be mostly Top 40 dance music with some older stuff thrown in, and of course requests! Can you help?” a seeker with the Web handle TamaraLynn wrote.

Responses included “Shut Up And Dance,” “Galaxy Club” and “Frequency.”

Sixtoemoe wanted a name for a club focused on soul music. Responses included “Soul Survivor,” “Bought and Souled,” “Souled Out” and “Soul Beneficiary.”

Posters on the site have to weed through some attempted humor. To a person seeking a name for a restaurant and bar in Portland, Maine’s art district, for example, a responder offered “Chez Snooty.” Another regular on the site has repeatedly offered “Alcohol & Archery” as a name for a variety of clubs and bars.

Some people do get solutions from the site. The owner of a small bar near a cemetery in Portland, Ore., was offered “The Dead End,” “Dead Zone,” “Plotz” and “Spirits,” among other names. The owner wrote back, “Thanks, we went with Spirits! Great idea.”

Several responders urged owners and managers seeking names to keep them simple. A poster with the web handle Intellishag sought suggestions for a martini bar that would play “chill-out and sexy music” for “sexy young people.”

A poster with the forum name, Elemental, responded, “Think ‘short and sweet,’ ” and suggested several signposts, including “Clean,” “Steel,” “Chrome,” “Velvet” and “Mink.”

Logos and illustrations paired with a name add another layer of style and statement. One of Connecticut’s best known music spots, Toad’s Place in New Haven, uses the image of the well-dressed Victorian Mr. Toad from “Wind in the Willows.”

Toad’s Place owner Brian Phelps says the name was derived from a restaurant “named after a toad or a frog that matched with the French restaurant theme” the original partners envisioned for the place in 1975. The Mr. Toad logo was added later, Phelps says.

Manning, the naming consultant, cites Toad’s Place as a name that stands out amid a crowd of bars and club names that sound like perfume labels.

“There are thousands and thousands of clubs that have edgy, in-your-face names like ‘Ecstasy’ and ‘Opium’ – something sexually suggestive,” he says. “You actually tend not to notice. That’s not pushing the envelope. Something like Toad’s is in the other direction. You actually remember it.”

Remember, Wordlab is the best free naming and branding site on the web, bar none, and we challenge anyone to do better for less.

The saying goes, “a brand is a promise.” On a personal level, I’ve always felt that statement was incomplete. A promise is the lowest common denominator of a brand – it’s what people expect. Think of your favorite brand, whether search engine or sneaker or coffee shop or free software, and you’ll know what I mean – a brand is an expectation. If you experience anything less, you’re disappointed. A promise seems like table stakes.

But a brand must go beyond a promise. To me, a brand is a cause – a guiding light. For fulfilling expectations, certainly, as well as dealing with the ill-defined and unexpected.